You know we love words. But there are times in life when they just don’t feel like enough.

If you’ve been at an event in a university or community center in the last few years, you’ve probably heard the host do a land acknowledgement which was so flat, stilted and scripted, it felt more colonialism like than progress. Those are the kind of words I’m talking about. I’ve been thinking for many years about doing a land acknowledgement at Firefly, but I’ve never wanted it to feel like I’m just ticking off a box...

When I was online dating, I was looking for all the signs.

We were both born in August!
His profile picture has a dog in it!
She emailed me on the 27th, my favourite number!

This story starts with a book. Over the holidays, I picked up a copy of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less Hard by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. Many parts shook me up, but the one that made me stop everything was when he wrote about the DMN, the Default Mode Network.

I’ll probably butcher this, but here we go…

It's Labour Day and I'm thinking about the weird ways that labour works. The labour of getting up, tending to what needs to be tended to, seeing the headlines, still eating breakfast. The labour of phones peeping and toes getting stubbed and the dentist appointment that needs to be rescheduled, the guilt rising again.

I hear it constantly in my intake phone calls with new students….

Last night when I was filling the kettles and getting settled to teach a Life Stories class, a burly guy walked in. I hurried over with a curt, "Can I help you?" He said "I'm from Sign-a-rama. We're here to install your sign."

And then everything changed…